Well I must say I'm very happy with how quickly EK switched everything over, and I much prefer the graphs, etc on the EK website to the previous companies I've been with.

The hour of power is interesting though... don't get me wrong, it's great, but I also think that depending on how you use it, you have to be careful using it as a measure of "savings" - my plan is to crank on as much heating as possible during that hour, but that also means I'll be using a lot of power that I possibly wouldn't have just because it's "free"

There is no such thing as a "free lunch"!

May have been mentioned before, but do you still receive a yearly electra sales discount when on EK?

I'm not using any additional power, or minimal. We heat the house up a bit warmer than usual 5-6am, but then there's less power used later, so it probably balances out more or less. We heat hot water that has to be heated some time. We run dishwasher and clothes drier. All that uses all the capacity our lead in cable has, without blowing the pole fuse (again).

Currently between 18% and 22% free hour of power. We're paying a little more than we were on Flick before when it was quite high, so I suspect EK is making money - that's not my problem though. I don't run hot water, dish washer, or clothes drier on peak because I figure it could cost EK more and we don't need to.

You receive your sales discount no matter which electricity retailer you use. The sales discount is highlighted on your electricity bill.

Electra is able to give you these regular sales discounts because of on-going efficiencies in the way we run our business.

These vary with region. In the BOP you only get a discount if you use Trustpower as your provider - which seems dodgy to me. Auckland (AECT) and Waikato (WEL Networks) I know it doesn't matter who you're with. I've recently moved to Wellington and it doesn't seem to be a thing here ???

Well I must say I'm very happy with how quickly EK switched everything over, and I much prefer the graphs, etc on the EK website to the previous companies I've been with.

The hour of power is interesting though... don't get me wrong, it's great, but I also think that depending on how you use it, you have to be careful using it as a measure of "savings" - my plan is to crank on as much heating as possible during that hour, but that also means I'll be using a lot of power that I possibly wouldn't have just because it's "free"

I think that too, but its not like downloading 2TB of torrents cos you can. You may heat the house more because of that hour, so while thats not a $ saving, its a quality of life saving.

@timmmay How did you go about verifying the 30min time shift? I see that I also have a Atlas Mk7C meter, although it has no Metrix branding. My usage data has finally started appearing and the graph shows my usage dropping off in the last half of each "Hour of Power". Is it enough to just get them to take a look or did you do some testing/evidence gathering with higher load at known times to prove the point?

EDIT - Actually I've noticed that Sat and Sun are identical graphs so one (or both) must be estimates. I'll give it a few days before I start investigating.

Those Mk7C meters do have an internal real time clock. I bought one of those meters myself from Ebay UK. It was NOS, factory calibrated in July 2011. When I got it it's internal battery still had plenty of life left. And the clock has only approx 8 min time shift. And it also shows the correct date. (only comparing to my cellphone, which I have not checked against any official reference). Although it has been programmed to UK time as it actually lags NZ time by 11 hours. (allowing for NZ and UK daylight savings offsets).

I bought it solely to use as a next level plug in power meter - I wired it into a 2m extension cord.